Debian upgrade styles [was Re: [clue-tech] Ubuntu experiences good and bad]

[Angelo Bertolli]

David L. Anselmi wrote:

> Angelo Bertolli wrote:
> [...]
>
>> I think I decided that:
>> 1) When a new stable release comes out, use that
>> 2) When you start to need/want newer things, and the testing release 
>> has been churning for 6 months to a year, switch to that.
>>
>> Also, I learned the "hard way" not to use "stable" and "testing" in 
>> my apt sources.  Much better to use the name of the release, like 
>> "sarge"
>
>
> How curious.  Are you doing this with production servers (in which 
> case I can understand)?  Are you running any custom or 3rd party apps 
> that require testing before upgrading?
>
> I've been running "testing" (not sarge/etch) for years.  I don't have 
> problems with upgrades--I do them every month or so.  I never run into 
> the "upgrade or fresh install" question.  I do pay attention to what 
> is getting upgraded so I can anticipate problems.
>
> I do run testing on production servers, but I have simple servers 
> (nothing that isn't stock Debian), a small budget, and a big upgrade 
> window.

I'm worse than you imagine.  I was actually talking about my desktop 
systems ;)  For servers, I stick with stable.  I think it's due to the 
fact that I haven't worked on learning how to use multiple levels of 
repositories at once.

The upgrading doesn't bother me as much as the potential rolling back.  
But now you're making me second guess myself to thinking I'm too paranoid.

I did have one "small" problem when I went too soon into the next 
testing distrobution, and I didn't like some of the changes.  I tried to 
roll back to the stable distrobution, but too much had been upgraded 
(hint:  libc), and I'm really not masterful enough to know exactly which 
packages to remove with ignoring dependencies to do the trick.

Angelo

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